This could use a remake done by Bloober Team or Ninja Theory. Or both of them in a collab maybe. And I mean a remake, not a remaster, because I think this game tried to do too many things at once, and thus was not that good in all of them. I mean, at the time of release - probably, and I think it was one of the rare horror games in 2005, at least with first person view, but I do not think it aged that well.
I was not able to play it properly when it released due to 2 reasons: my PC was not that powerful, so it was quite laggy, and I think I had some kind of bug very early in the game, which did not progression, and I then switched to something else. I decided to give it another go and try to complete it similarly to some other games recently, and unfortunately, similar to Tribes: Vengeance, I still was not able to finish it myself. This not because of crashes, but because the door would not open when I picked up the crystal in refinery. So I watched the rest on YouTube, but I think I played through enough to have a solid opinion.
The game tries to juggle multiple genres at the same time. It's a horror-like walking simulator, puzzle and a shooter. Oh, and stealth game, but that may be considered as part of walking simulator, too, I guess. Can't say how it felt back in 2005, but nowadays there are games with better atmosphere of "insanity", let alone better shooters. Heck, Chaser from 2003 felt better in terms of shooting, and it had completely idiotic AI like half the time. Here shooter sequences felt tedious and broke the atmosphere of horror and survival, because... It just gave you too much power. Of course, there were some places, that was ok (final moments of the game, some "chasing" in early game, a few moments in refinery, some action on the ship), but overall, this just broke the immersion for me.
I remember (and this can be wrong) that the game was advertised at the time as horror first. It certainly has good foundation even without Lovecraftian elements. The early game, where you are investigating stuff, and discovering strange things, and having those visions (which are acknowledged only once, BTW), felt quite solid to me. There was just enough tension, that kept me walking forward. Then there was the adrenalin rush of the escape sequence, and that should have turned into an actual survival horror, considering you are a lone detective, and villagers are not exactly human, but...
You get a gun.
There is nothing wrong with that, but it felt like it gave you too much power. And you then get even more power, when you get a shotgun, and then a Tommy gun. Yes, you lose the weapons periodically, and you need to rely on your environment (through puzzles), it still gives you an extra feeling of safety. Of course, maybe it's less on higher difficulty levels, but on the normal one it felt quite easy to kill off the fishmen most of the time. To me it feels wrong, because a horror needs to be... Personal. Intimate, even. This is not it.
So, this breaks the atmosphere, but then puzzles breaking it more. Not because they are bad. I would say it's navigation around that is bad, and highlighting of interactive elements. I am not saying that they need to glow, but I think Layers of Fear had puzzles and also some labyrinth-like places, and I still somehow knew intuitively where to go and what to do. Here... Let's just say that in early stages of refinery, I did not even notice that there were stairs to the left of the elevator, that I needed to follow, and I used the other one, did not find a way to progress there, and had to read a walkthrough... Or maybe I am just used to different type of design, dunno.
But that's why I think this game needs a remake. Something close to Resident Evil 7 (not 8, that one lost all of the atmosphere from 7th), but maybe even better, since DCotE was quite logical in its puzzles most of the time. Bloober Team can do good horrors with good level design. With weird stuff, with lighting effects, with somewhat environmental puzzles and that feeling of "dread", that could suit the remake well. Layers of Fear 2 also had some sea themes (since it was on a ship), and I think you had a gun for some time, too.
Drop the shooting for the most part, make things more personal, less enemies, but more dangerous, and thus more stealth and/or environmental kills. And properly lean into the insanity stuff. Ninja Theory did great things in Hellblade with the voices, and it would work wonders here. DCotE barely uses voices in the head, even though your character does speak to himself sometimes. And visual distress is just swaying of the camera and weird zooming, while it could be actually seeing things (which fits the narrative of the game, BTW). Ninja Theory can do good nature scenes, so if they are combined with the more weird stuff that Bloober can do - that could be an amazing recreation of Lovecraftian mythos.
But, of course, I doubt this will happen. So do I recommend the original? Definitely use the unofficial patch, and ideally the texture pack. Be ready for some uneven voice acting (sometimes it's really good, sometimes it's too flat). Be ready for some annoying ladder climbing (you need to look up to get off the ladder at the top). And be ready for mediocre shooter elements, and... Narrative that does not really go anywhere, in the end. Or maybe it went over my head, because I could not read any of the notes due to inventory interface corruption. And even though it's cheap, probably buy at a discount, if you can.
